Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34450996›Full record

ArticleSensors (Basel, Switzerland)2021

Deep Neural Network-Based Respiratory Pathology Classification Using Cough Sounds.

B T Balamurali, Hwan Ing Hee, Saumitra Kapoor, Oon Hoe Teoh, Sung Shin Teng, Khai Pin Lee, Dorien Herremans, Jer Ming Chen

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
15citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
2.8field-weighted citation impact, top 9% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Cough biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring of respiratory disease: a systematic review.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2026
    Pooled it
  2. Audio-based digital biomarkers in diagnosing and managing respiratory diseases: a systematic review and bibliometric analysis.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2025
    Pooled it
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Review
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

B T BalamuraliScience, Mathematics and Technology, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.ORCID 0000-0002-8523-6607
Hwan Ing HeeDepartment of Paediatric Anaesthesia, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Singapore 229899, Singapore.ORCID 0000-0001-9854-4302
Saumitra KapoorScience, Mathematics and Technology, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.ORCID 0000-0003-1782-5490
Oon Hoe TeohRespiratory Medicine Service, Department of Paediatrics, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Singapore 229899, Singapore.
Sung Shin TengDepartment of Emergency Medicine, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Singapore 229899, Singapore.
Khai Pin LeeDepartment of Emergency Medicine, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Singapore 229899, Singapore.
Dorien HerremansInformation Systems, Technology, and Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.ORCID 0000-0001-8607-1640
Jer Ming ChenScience, Mathematics and Technology, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.ORCID 0000-0002-2500-0969
KK Women's and Children's Hospital · SGSingapore University of Technology and Design · SG

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Intelligent systems are transforming the world, as well as our healthcare system. We propose a deep learning-based cough sound classification model that can distinguish between children with healthy versus pathological coughs such as asthma, upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), and lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). To train a deep neural network model, we collected a new dataset of cough sounds, labelled with a clinician's diagnosis. The chosen model is a bidirectional long-short-term memory network (BiLSTM) based on Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) features. The resulting trained model when trained for classifying two classes of coughs-healthy or pathology (in general or belonging to a specific respiratory pathology)-reaches accuracy exceeding 84% when classifying the cough to the label provided by the physicians' diagnosis. To classify the subject's respiratory pathology condition, results of multiple cough epochs per subject were combined. The resulting prediction accuracy exceeds 91% for all three respiratory pathologies. However, when the model is trained to classify and discriminate among four classes of coughs, overall accuracy dropped: one class of pathological coughs is often misclassified as the other. However, if one considers the healthy cough classified as healthy and pathological cough classified to have some kind of pathology, then the overall accuracy of the four-class model is above 84%. A longitudinal study of MFCC feature space when comparing pathological and recovered coughs collected from the same subjects revealed the fact that pathological coughs, irrespective of the underlying conditions, occupy the same feature space making it harder to differentiate only using MFCC features.

Indexed as

AsthmaCoughChildHumansLongitudinal StudiesNeural Networks, ComputerRespiratory SoundsSoundasthmaBiLSTMcough classificationdeep neural networksLRTIMFCCsrespiratory pathology classificationURTI

Identifiers

PMID34450996
PMCPMC8402243
OpenAlexW3193766449

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.